So, AG Eric Holder is definitely sticking around for awhile. How ’bout that.

posted at 5:38 pm on January 10, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

I already expended all of my related outrage over this when we first learned that it was the probable eventuality — “this” meaning the fact that the head of a department that oversaw a thoroughly irresponsible and lethal gunwalking operation resulting in the deaths of at least two Americans and countless Mexicans through, at-best, credulity-pushing incompetence, and then had to hide behind executive privilege provided by his good buddy the president to excuse all of the stonewalling, and is now somehow brazenly not taking the proffered opportune moment to duck out quietly? …Well, perhaps I hadn’t expended my outrage.

But Attorney General Eric Holder’s continuing tenure is about more than diversity, or convenience, or a righteous job rightfully done, or even merely policy alignments; as BuzzFeed points out, Holder has fulfilled a specialized and invaluable role as President Obama’s “heat shield” on multiple fronts:

“Holder is not a lackey in the mold of Bush ’43 A.G. Alberto Gonzales,” said Lloyd Green, a New York lawyer who was an aide to President George H.W. Bush. “But, Holder lacks the independence of Bush A.G. John Ashcroft and the professionalism of Holder’s immediate predecessor, former federal judge Michael Mukasey. Holder is and remains very much about politics.” …

“One thing that people never understood about Holder’s importance in this administration is how he has absorbed so many attacks that could otherwise land in the White House,” said one former administration official who admires the Attorney General, and noted that the Justice Department dealt with such politically unpalatable questions as the Guantanamo Bay detention center and detainee trials. “Think of the three issues he’s taken the most heat on: terrorism (KSM), race (Black Panther controversy, voting rights), and guns (Fast and Furious). Those are some of the most polarizing issues in politics, and he’s been a heat shield on all of them.” …

“President Obama probably could not have found a more pliant attorney general,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who accused Holder of looking the other way on Administration scandals.

And the Attorney General’s role may become even more pertinent to Americans at large as the White House searches for ways in which “executive action can be taken” on furthering the gun-control agenda, much of which will come down to the ways in which the Department of Justice decides to enforce those policies and run his department’s various agencies — and there’s no reelection campaign to get in the way now.

“The president is going to act,” Biden told reporters on Wednesday, without getting into specifics. “Executive orders, executive action, can be taken. We haven’t decided what this is yet, but we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and all the rest of the Cabinet members.”

Obama could direct the Justice Department to start prosecuting people who lie on their background checks when trying to purchase a weapon. In 2009, the FBI reported 71,000 cases. The DOJ only prosecuted 77 of them.

In August 2011, Justice began requiring gun dealers in four states bordering Mexico to report when a single buyer bought multiple semi-automatic weapons, POLITICO reported in December. That power could be expanded to other states or otherwise broadened by executive action. They also tweaked the F.B.I.-run federal background check system, automating the upload of federal charge and conviction information and informing states of actions taken in another state that could impact a person’s eligibility to buy guns.

Blowback

Trackbacks/Pings

Comments

President Choom needs to make absolutely certain that he will never be investigated or prosecuted for his illegal activities. The only way to ensure that is to have someone with even less regard for the law than he does.

Killing Mexicans and Boarder patrol agents since…………..Well no matter, he has time for more practice now. Eric will it be you personally coming to take my weapons? I’ll have Roy Jr. meet you at the gate.

Why was Gonzales a “lackey”? He oversaw a relatively trivial personnel affair, yet because of it the MSM (ignoring the fact that he was a card-carrying member of one of their most precious minority groups) crucified him and he resigned. Yet here’s Holder, hanging in there after overseeing one of the most egregious and deadly goof-ups by any Justice Dept. evah. Lackey, indeed.

So he isn’t to be punished at all for covering up Obama’s Guns for Gangsters Operation?

Just for gansters ? How do we know Hussein didn’t supply guns to alqaeda and muslim bros ? Maybe he still is …who knows?
If only we were a free nation with a free press and investigative journalists :(

Why was Gonzales a “lackey”? He oversaw a relatively trivial personnel affair, yet because of it the MSM (ignoring the fact that he was a card-carrying member of one of their most precious minority groups) crucified him and he resigned. Yet here’s Holder, hanging in there after overseeing one of the most egregious and deadly goof-ups by any Justice Dept. evah. Lackey, indeed.

KS Rex on January 10, 2013 at 5:49 PM

He was forced out for presiding over the firing of a bunch of AGs, political appointees, which EVERY President fires as a matter of course so they can put in their own people. Holder is responsible for F&F and he gets a pass.

“We want to have as part of the anti-gun initiative bill an informational campaign to really change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC., and in particular our young people. They are saturated in the media and in entertainment or by the entertainment industry with violence and I think that too many of our young people, particularly our young men, are fascinated with violence and, in particular, fascinated with guns.

What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we’ve changed our attitudes about cigarettes. When I was growing up, people smoked all of the time — both my parents did — but over time, we changed the way people thought about smoking and now we have people, who cower outside of buildings, smoke in private and don’t want to admit it. Um, and that’s what I think that we need to with guns…really change the way people think about guns.

Now, this is not something that’s going to be very easy to do because we are fighting something, quite frankly, that appears everyday on the television, on the radio, in our popular music, in movies that these kids are exposed to. It will be an effort that will entail this that I am not familiar with. I think that I am a pretty good lawyer, but I, we need to get innovative, creative things that are going to grab the attention of these kids and really change the way, as I said, that they think about guns. So, what I’ve asked is that the creative community in Washington, the ad agencies that create these snappy ads that make me buy things that I don’t really need to devote that talent in a more constructive way so that we can get at the minds of these young people.

In this informational campaign, I’ve also called upon newspapers and the television stations to devote to us time and space so that we can get these ads and so that we can use these spots and not to give us 1, 2 o’clock in the morning when no one is watching, but to give us time when people, particularly young people, are watching television so that when they are watching The Fresh Prince of Bel Air or Martin or whatever else they watch…and, yeah, I watch them every once in a while…so that they will see these ads and be grabbed by these ads.

I’ve also asked people, who have influence over youngsters, entertainers, athletes, to be involved in this programme, as well, nut not only them, community leaders, Jesse Jackson, Mayor Marion Barry, people with credibility with young people should be on the television, on the radio, and telling these youngsters that it is wrong to carry a gun and that if you have information about people who are carrying guns that you need to share that with Chief Thomas and his people, as well.

I’ve also asked the school board to make a anti-gun message a part of every day some kind of anti-violence, anti-gun message. Every day, every school, and every level. One thing that I think is clear with young people, and with adults as well, is that we have to be repetitive about this. It is not enough to simply have a catchy ad on a Monday and then only do it every Monday. We need to do it everyday of the week and brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.

We also want to have a hotline that we will set up and have the number of that hotline emblazoned in their minds so that when they see a gun or become familiar with the facts of a gun crime, they would call that hotline and pass that information on.”

So he isn’t to be punished at all for covering up Obama’s Guns for Gangsters Operation?

Just for gansters ? How do we know Hussein didn’t supply guns to alqaeda and muslim bros ? Maybe he still is …who knows?
If only we were a free nation with a free press and investigative journalists :(

burrata on January 10, 2013 at 6:01 PM

Yes, the left has corrupted the press and it’s constraint on the government with the 1st amendment. Ditto for the freedom of religion.

‘Cuz he did such a great job in the past 4 years! Besides, he knows where the bodies are buried….no, not the hundreds of dead Mexicans or 2 dead Federal agents or thousands killed because of gun control laws.